OTTAWA — The federal election campaign is officially underway, with the first of 40 days dominated by two issues the governing Liberals would have preferred to avoid: the SNC-Lavalin affair and Bill 21, the Quebec secularism law.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who visited Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Wednesday morning to ask Gov. Gen. Julie Payette to dissolve Parliament, had to field questions on both issues even as he sought to persuade Canadians to give him four more years in office.

“We’ve done a lot together these past four years, but the truth is we’re just getting started. So Canadians have an important choice to make,” he told reporters. “Will we go back to the failed policies of the past, or will we continue to move forward?”

Trudeau tried to paint the Liberals as the best choice for the future, repeatedly raising the spectre of former prime minister Stephen Harper during his speech. But he was forced to address his own bogeyman — the SNC-Lavalin affair — in the wake of a new Globe and Mail story reporting that the RCMP has been hampered in its attempt to look into the scandal by the government’s refusal to waive cabinet confidentiality.

The Globe reported that the RCMP has been looking into potential obstruction of justice, but individuals involved in the matter cannot discuss events covered by the rule of cabinet confidentiality.

Asked about the new revelations, Trudeau remained unapologetic for his role in the affair. “My job as prime minister is to be there, to stand up for and defend Canadians’ jobs,” he said. “I will always defend the public interest. I will always defend people’s jobs.”

He also said his government has already given out “the largest and most expansive waiver of cabinet confidence in Canada’s history.” The claim was in reference to a waiver issued earlier this year that allowed former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to make allegations that she was inappropriately pressured by the prime minister and senior government officials to negotiate an agreement with SNC-Lavalin that would have allowed the Montreal engineering giant to avoid criminal prosecution.

Last month, the federal ethics commissioner found Trudeau violated the Conflict of Interest Act by trying to influence Wilson-Raybould, and raised similar concerns about being denied access to cabinet confidences. In both cases, the Liberals say the Clerk of the Privy Council, Ian Shugart, made the decision not to extend the waiver and did not have input from the Prime Minister’s Office.

Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau speaks during a news conference at Rideau Hall after asking Governor General Julie Payette to dissolve Parliament, and mark the start of a federal election campaign, Sept. 11, 2019.Patrick Doyle/Reuters

Nonetheless, the news story gave opposition parties new fodder to attack Trudeau as they launched their own election campaigns. Early Wednesday morning, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said, “He has lost the moral authority to govern. What today shows you is you just cannot trust Justin Trudeau.”

The NDP, meanwhile, used the scandal to bolster the party’s campaign narrative that Trudeau sides with “rich friends and corporations over Canadians.” The party also took aim at Scheer, pointing to a 2018 meeting between the Conservative leader and SNC-Lavalin CEO Neil Bruce to discuss deferred prosecution agreements and claiming Scheer has also “gone to bat for corporate friends.”

In Quebec, however, where the SNC-Lavalin affair has failed to drum up the same level of outrage as it has elsewhere in the country, the focus on day one of the campaign was on another issue entirely. All the major party leaders faced questions on Wednesday about Quebec’s controversial secularism law, Bill 21, which bans religious symbols for some public sector employees, including teachers, judges and police officers.

The bill, which became law in June, is popular in Quebec but is facing a legal challenge from a Muslim organization and civil liberties advocates who say it’s unconstitutional. At least one Quebec school board has confirmed that it has denied employment to would-be teachers who refused to remove their religious symbols.

The issue is a minefield for the major federal leaders, who oppose the law but don’t want to be accused of meddling in Quebec’s affairs. Trudeau told reporters he’s “deeply opposed” to the bill, but shied away from saying whether a Liberal government might get involved in the legal challenge. “I’m very pleased that Quebecers themselves have chosen to contest this bill in court to stand up and defend the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” he said. “However, at this time, I feel it would be counterproductive for the federal government to engage in this process.”

Scheer, who launched his campaign in Trois-Rivières, Que., a seat his party is hoping to take from the NDP, said that the Conservatives would never consider a similar law at the federal level. “We will always stand up for the rights of Canadians, and the rights for expression and the rights of freedom of religion,” he said.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, speaking from his campaign launch in London, Ont., said, “It upsets me. It saddens me. It’s a divisive law. It’s state-sanctioned discrimination.” Singh, who is a turban-wearing Sikh, could not be hired as a teacher in Quebec under Bill 21. Still, like the other leaders, he has not said he would fight the law in court.

In light of Wednesday’s comments, Quebec Premier François Legault publicly called on the federal parties to commit to staying out of Quebec’s business. “I am asking all federal parties to make sure and reassure the population of Quebec that they won’t participate in any suit against Bill 21,” he told reporters in Quebec City. “I want them to stay out of it — forever. Not for the moment, but forever.”